County lowers tax rate

On Monday morning, county commissioners adopted a tax rate for the 2015 fiscal year that will see the tax burden for a $100,000 Young County home go down $17 from 2014.

“Considering we are adding personnel, have inflationary pressures on insurance, utilities, computer services, new voting machines, and a 3 percent across-the-board raise for non-elected employees, I’d say that was a good effort,” Young County Commissioner Mike Sipes said.

Young County will lower its tax rate for 2015 about 2 cents per $100 of property valuation, from 58.9 cents per $100 of valuation to 56.9 cents, but will still collect more taxes than last year due to county-wide property valuations increasing. The effective rate, or the rate that would generate the same revenue as the 2014 budget, is 56.3 cents.

The net taxable value for property in the county went up about 2.8 percent, from $1,080,770,652 in 2013 to $1,110,185,470 in 2014.

“Though it is somewhat lower, by two pennies or more, than our previous year’s rate, it is still slightly above our effective rate,” Young County Judge John Bullock said. “It calculates to be 1 percent.”

The 56.9 cent rate will generate $290,000 more taxes collected than the 2014 rate in a total county budget just under $13 million, Young County Auditor Cheryl Roberts said.

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